Man arrested for spreading Shanghai debt rumor

A man was arrested recently for instigating an online rumor suggesting that "Shanghai had borrowed 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) from temples," city police revealed on Thursday.

The police said they launched an investigation on July 2 after a screenshot purportedly from NetEase News went viral online, claiming that an anonymous official at the city's finance bureau allegedly said that "Shanghai had borrowed 10 billion yuan in incense money from local temples as short-term debt, with Jing'an Temple contributing the most, at 4.8 billion yuan...."

Authorities had refuted the rumor via authoritative media and NetEase News also stated that it had never published such information.

The Changning branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau began an investigation and caught the suspect surnamed Sun outside Shanghai the next day.

Further investigation found that Sun fabricated an image with the "NetEase News" logo and the rumor on July 1 and sent it to his friends through the WeChat messaging app. The fake news was widely shared across major online platforms, quickly becoming a trending topic the next day.